This Week

The ATD International Conference and Expo is an event so huge that it has its own gravitational pull. We’re in its orbit and so I’ll be there from Saturday through Wednesday.

I’m easy enough to find by giving me a shout on Twitter (@aaronesilvers). If you’re shy, just message me, but if you’re not shy, please come up and say hi. I am there to talk shop with you. Yes. You.

I’m not presenting anything after the TRYxAPI event on Saturday, May 16 (12:30-5pm, Hyatt Regency, free to non-attendees). Which means even if (when) I’m hanging out with the likes of Julie Dirksen, Trish Uhl, Cammy Bean and Justin Brusino (among many others), I’m at ATD ICE to listen to whatever you got going on and offer actionable feedback. I’m there to coach. I’m there for you to bounce an idea off of me. I’m there for the jokes. I’m good for a cup of coffee or a beer. I’m happy to grab a bite to eat with you.

For realz. I’m there to hang, make new friends, help folks connect with the people, know-how and resources they need and generally be helpful.

So if you want to talk about how to get a seat at the table, let’s talk about that because I have lessons learned. If you want to talk about designing learning experiences that go beyond slides and classrooms, lets model out those design ideas. If you want to talk about how to break out of your rut, believe me, I’ve been there and would love to help you.

You’ll likely find me in the hallways or in the expo hall hanging with xAPI community folks — including our friends at RISC, Float and Riptide.

If you just want to know activities I recommend at ICE, here’s a short list:

The #LEARNxAPI MOOC is starting tomorrow, Tuesday 5/12. There are so many great resources being curated for people who want to get into the business and the tech of xAPI, we could not be more proud to be a part of this. There’s still time to sign up and with over 300 registered already, you won’t be the only one (ahem) getting your learn on.

As part of the MOOC, on Thursday at 2pm Eastern, I’ll be hosting a Twitter chat on xAPI. Even if you’re not enrolled, you’re certainly welcome to join us. Just look for the #LEARNxAPI hashtag… we’ll be around and likely rowdy.

This week is just a prelude for the blitz of xAPI activity around ATD’s International Conference and Expo in Orlando, FL starting this weekend. On Saturday, 5/16, the launch of #TRYxAPI will be happening thanks to Nick Washburn and Riptide Software. John Delano of Saltbox and I will be presenting and facilitating things that help professionals make the business case for learning experiences, as well as design them. Nick will share some case studies where open source xAPI projects are put to work. It’s free, with a full bar (not a typo), so you should join us if you’re around from 12:30-5:00pm. RSVP now!

Next Tuesday, the xAPI party bus descends on Taverna Opa for the xAPI/Tin Can Meetup hosted by Rustici Software and Saltbox. Thankfully, I just get to hang there while they do all the hosting, so I’ll be looking forward to it. Space is limited so you should let them know you’re coming so an appropriate amount of hummus is available (it’s their joke… 😉

If you’re at ATD ICE next week and you want to grab some coffee or a Cuban sandwich, just say the word!

We are blown away by the amount of interest in xAPI, and so are many others. We’re happy to announce there will be an xAPI Camp coming with DevLearn 2015 in Las Vegas, NV, at the MGM Grand (details forthcoming). We are planning events with the eLearning Guild (and with other partners) through 2016 and we’ll have an event calendar up in the next few weeks.

MakingBetter @ DemoFest

This isn’t a mock-up — this is a screenshot of RISC, Inc.’s new PDF Annotator Visualization in full action.

The timing worked out just right that as we’re wrapping up our first project with RISC, Inc, not only was xAPI Camp happening, Learning Solutions was, too. Art Werkenthin and I will be at DemoFest on Thursday, March 27, to talk about “PDF Annotation in the Cloud: A Real-world Application of the xAPI” The story behind it is simple. The request from the client goes back years and simply could not be realized until the advent of xAPI. With Float Mobile Learning and RISC, Inc’s collaboration on their PDF Annotator app, we worked with the data to visualize the aggregate use of these important support documents so the client can improve their various documents and therefore improve safety and compliance in some of the toughest jobs in the energy industry. We are incredibly excited to illustrate just what can be done with xAPI that makes a real difference in organizational performance. Talk to us at DemoFest on Thursday!!!

Managing Data-Driven Projects

Megan Torrance, of Torrance Learning, collaborated with Megan and I on a presentation where we dished on what Learning & Development departments might want to know about managing different kinds of projects when data joins the fray.

As a Packer fan, I can relate to the angst of the 12th Man. Still, though, you have to admire the team spirit.

There’s a lot of team spirit about the xAPI community. The third xAPI Design Cohort kicked off, but there’s still time to sign up by February 5. Last week, our friends across the pond hosted a literal “bar” camp for xAPI — over forty people talking xAPI at a pub in London after the Learning Technologies UK conference. If the blog posts, tweets and pictures are any indication, a good time was had by all. Two weeks ago, Rustici Software shared a number of case studies presented during a webinar debuting a first glimpse at the work we’re doing with RISC, Inc. creating custom reporting and data visualization to go with the PDF Annotator Application they developed with Float Mobile.

Site Updates

We’ve gotten wonderfully busy with client work. Kicking off new projects this week makes for a very fun start to the year. In the next couple of months, however, we not only will work a lot with our clients, but between Learning Solutions, xAPI Camp in Orlando, Up to All of Us and the forthcoming xAPI Summit in Spring Arbor, Michigan we have a pretty full slate. We took a cue from Duce Enterprises and started working on our events calendar to make it simpler for you to find us — not just at conferences, but in webinars, hangouts, workshops and local meetups. We travel a bit and we love meeting people, geeking out about learning and making new friends. I hope you’ll look us up.

We clarified what it is we do through MakingBetter, and who we help. With the work we’ve been doing for different kinds of clients, be they individuals or organizations, one thing has become clear. Our clients believe learning and organizational development are levers for growth. They rely on us to help them elevate their game with innovative learning technology. Our clients want to make a dent in the universe. We provide coaching and consulting: needs analysis, architecture, design, procurement, development and implementation.

What We’re Into

Dave Gray wrote about “How to Create Your Future Self” – key quote there is “By paying attention to your experience, as it happens, in the moment, you can find that there are many other possible ways of being and doing.” This reminds me a lot about advice I’ve taken to heart — “Be deliberate.” Being deliberate is tough, though. It requires making choices. Matt Cross had some good advice recently on “How to Choose.”

Brandy Agerbeck began her Kickstarter campaign to fund the release of her second book on visual thinking. Brandy’s incredible and one of the people we’d really enjoy working with. The Idea Shapers is going to be a great book and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

Wow, last week a doozy. ATD TechKnowledge had us giving presentations, participating in panel discussions, connecting with old friends and making new ones, too.

ATD TechKnowledge Recap

We presented twice last week. Our presentation on Content Strategy remained basically in-tact from DevLearn this last year with some expansion on granularity, modularity and discreteness. No need to re-download a new slide deck, though. Those details are also included in a new presentation we shared on The Big Picture of Adaptive Learning.

For more than 30 years, the Artificial Intelligence community looked at pre-determined, logic-based approaches to static maps of domain knowledge (that’s a mouthful). In the last five years, there’s been a bit of a shift to make data-driven recommendations and personalized content a reality in the near-term. The technology, math, and science that makes this possible is pretty crazy and how well it works is completely dependent on the design of the content (which informs our approach to content strategy). How well it works also depends on the quality of the data and the accuracy of a learner’s experience with the content, compared to what that content is designed for.

These technologies aren’t ready for enterprise learning yet, for reasons we expose in the presentation — chief among them is that enterprise really doesn’t have enough content to cover the bases. That said, some technologies are here now. The design practices needed to make use of adaptive learning now and into the future represent the best practices you should be applying in your organization’s information and content management practices.

And yeah, that includes using xAPI to collect analytics on how content is used in context. Then compare that to the design goals of that content. Then… continuously improve the content experience to bridge the gaps you discover.

Where Did We Get All Those LEGO Pictures?

You’d be surprised how difficult it is to find straight-up illustrations from one source of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but as soon as I looked on Flickr, Barney Main‘s pictures showed up. We reached out and he was very kind to give us permission to use his images, and we found others online as well. People like Barney are doing some great stuff with LEGO and we were just glad to be able to share some of that with y’all.

What’s Our Content Strategy Presentation Like?

I hadn’t had the opportunity to formally meet Dan Steer before last week. He had some very lovely things to say about our presentation on Content Strategy.

ATD TechKnowledge

We’re pretty happy about getting back together with some of the gang this week at ATD TechKnowledge. We have two presentations this year, some panel sessions (“TK Chats”) and I’m sure there will be more than a few meetups.

Interview on E-Learning 24/7

Craig Weiss is an e-learning analyst who consults through his firm, E-Learning 24/7. His focus is on buyers and suppliers in the eLearning industry. We’ve bumped into each other over the past year at a few events, including Docebo’s dConf User Conference in 2013 and again at the Next Gen LMS conference last summer.

In December, Craig reached out to me with some questions about Learning Record Stores and how they relate to the xAPI specification. In answering them, Craig asked if I’d be interested in a more detailed interview. Over the holidays, Craig asked me some excellent questions about the history of xAPI, what’s the deal with its name, how does xAPI fare in terms of interoperability, security and privacy…

Craig asked straight-up questions and I gave him straight-up answers.

It’s long, but I think the interview turned out to be a good read. I hope the responses I gave are helpful. Truth is all in the telling, and I tried my best to tell it in a way people could follow — especially those who aren’t involved day-to-day with xAPI’s development.

Thinking

First off… Go Big Red! That’s my Wisconsin Badgers in the Final Four, and while others in the MakingBetter family are bigger basketball fans than us, doubtlessly none are as big a fans of UW-Madison as I am.

Anyway, can you believe it’s April already? Wow. This last month has been a whirlwind for us and we are on the cusp of some pretty damn huge announcements. How huge? Well, let’s just say that if you are hoping for some big things with Experience API and, really, the practice and industry of learning, education and training… well, I think we’ll have some things (plural) that will pique your interest. Stay tuned.

Linking

The last week has been so full of great links we have to chill on sharing all the awesome we got to.

Allan Branch of Less Accounting started up a Coworking space and his own conference… only to find it was distracting from his focus. There are a lot of lessons in this post and his points about what it takes to put on a conference… well, they are wholly on-point, to the effect that it could well be at least a year-long part-time job. At any rate, I applaud the insights gained from taking advantage of the opportunities afforded to those guys and the strength of will it takes to cast aside what, for Less Accounting, were distractions. http://kinhr.com/allan-branch-less-accounting/

Brian shared not only the story about Less Accounting above, but this one by Chris Lema on how to price “risk.” Like pretty much everything, it starts first with doing your homework, doing everything you can under the sun to figure out as much of what you don’t know as possible, and then ask questions back to your stakeholders that are specific, that are targeted at filling in those blanks. Then, reach a mutual understand where everyone feels the cost (and therefore the accountability) for mitigating potential risks. It makes a lot of sense, this guy. http://chrislema.com/pricing-risk/

This last Monday I met up with some friends, including Jim Remsik, fellow community leader, conference organizer, Madisonian and world-renowned hugger. Seriously, he gives amazing hugs. I wish I had a picture of our epic hug. Anyway, Jim shared a great post relating how the author’s approach to filmmaking is also an approach to self-improvement (which, we can all agree, is a pretty loaded term in and of itself). “There’s no way to perfectly and reliably generate only perfect, fantastic, interesting, award-winning ideas and to know ahead of time that everything is going to work or guarantee they will all connect brilliantly with other people. The messy, vulnerable, failure-prone process of getting them out – in conversation, on paper, on a cocktail napkin, in a photo, in a tune you can’t stop humming – is how you figure out if they are any good. Megan said it perfectly, in the essay about essays linked upstream: “As E.M. Forster wrote, I don’t know what I think til I see what I say… The stuff that makes you vulnerable and imperfect is the stuff that makes you interesting. Relatable to others. Perfectly yourself.” Lots of connections back to that John Hagel post we shared last week about influence.

Thinking

Above us is The Fox, our logo for Up to All of Us, courtesy of our friend, Jason Early. The fox’s cunning and its ability to work as part of a skulk (or leash… Google it) is heavy on our minds. In fact, we’ve spent the entire week since returning home from North Carolina following up on the things big and small we’ve been charged with. With renewed wind in our sails, we’re focused and stoked.

Linking

Our friend, Brad Wilkening of DevMynd shared this link from John Allspaw of Etsy, on building what he calls a “Just Culture” at Etsy. The focus of this post was on “Blameless Post-Mortems” which breaks the dysfunctional cycle of punishment in figuring out what goes wrong on projects. Instead, “a funny thing happens when engineers make mistakes and feel safe when giving details about it: they are not only willing to be held accountable, they are also enthusiastic in helping the rest of the company avoid the same error in the future. They are, after all, the most expert in their own error. They ought to be heavily involved in coming up with remediation items. So technically, engineers are not at all ‘off the hook’ with a blameless PostMortem process. They are very much on the hook for helping Etsy become safer and more resilient, in the end. And lo and behold: most engineers I know find this idea of making things better for others a worthwhile exercise.” http://bit.ly/1hlb3JN

Doing

On Wednesday, March 26, I’m hosting our second IEEE xAPI Study Group meeting as a Google+ Hangout-on-air. It’s an open group focused on implementation practices and challenges, starting at 11am Eastern.